A beautiful autumn.......Day of the Dead!

After days of rain in Berlin, Warsaw has been a welcome sight. No rain for a change and temperatures that we should have experienced in September! It is almost as if September and November switched. To put things in perspective, on 11/1/2006, our first day Day of the Dead (a major family holiday here in Warsaw) it was snowing. Today the high was 63 Fahrenheit.

It was a beautiful day today and everything was closed as it happens when every major Polish holiday. We slept in after last nights candy craze and after waking up we got ready and headed to the park.

The photo shoot I had scheduled earlier in October fell through due to all the other things going on with school, projects, etc. So, the Cat brought along the tripod and we had our own amateur photo shoot along with some time on the playground. We brought our dogs and got some great pictures of the kids with the dogs as well as family pictures.  

We came home around 2, had a late lunch and waited. Waited for night to fall so we could go to a Polish cemetery to witness the Day of the Dead Polish style. The last time I actually did this was in Mexico where they go all out and make their celebration a bit more macabre.

So, we went to Cmentarz Powązkowski the oldest and most famous cemetery in Warsaw. It is famous because a lot of famous Polish people are buried there. I don't know any of them.

There were cemeteries closer to us, but several Polish friends had told us to go to Cmentarz Powązkowski. What they failed to tell us was the massive swarms of people that would be there. We drove and had to find parking. Had they recommended the bus, I would have taken our Bus line from the house that ends at the cemetery.

Day of the Dead is a big deal in most countries other than America. Every country I have visited thus far during this day, celebrates it to a certain degree. The Poles out do themselves with this one. The reason people like me (who don't have any relative buried there and don't know any of the famous people there) go is for the experience of seeing thousands of tombs lit up with candles (kept burning by candle holders they call znicze). People also lay flowers and wreaths, but what makes this different is all the candles.

We walked around for a while admiring the displays. Tradition has it that you light up the grave of loved ones and if you find a grave that has no candle, you light one on that grave on behalf of family that either could not come to this cemetery or that are no longer living themselves. Luckily for me, I was not the only tourist there. There were plenty of people with cameras and tripods. I left the tripod at home, but I certainly joined the others in taking pictures. Here is a sampling of what it was like: